Hulu ends direct operations in Japan

Hulu started Japan operations on August 31, 2011, and less than three years later, CEO Mike Hopkins announced in his blog the sale of Japan operations to Nippon Television Network Corporation (日本テレビ放送網株式会社).

During this time, Hulu Japan had grown to 50 content partnerships, offering 13,000 TV drama, movie and anime titles: about 1000 movies and 12,000 TV episodes.

In March 2015 Hulu Japan, now under Nippon TV ownership, achieved 1 million subscriptions.

Hulu-CEO, Mike Hopkins, did not announce why Hulu sold Japan operations to Nippon TV. We assume that Hulu, owned by traditional large media corporations (NBC, Fox and Disney) saw the need to partner with a large established Japanese media company to achieve wide penetration and long term growth. Maybe Hulu had expected much more rapid growth in subscription numbers in Japan?

On February 27th, 2014 Hulu-CEO, Mike Hopkins, announced the sale of Hulu Japan to Nippon Television Network Corporation (not the Nippon Television Holding company).

Thus the company operating Hulu services in Japan is HJ Holdings, LLC (HJホールディングス合同会社), and is owned 100% by Nippon Television Network Corporation (日本テレビ放送網株式会社), a subsidiary of Nippon Television Holdings, Inc. (日本テレビホールディングス株式会社).

On March 23, 2015, Hulu Japan achieved 1 million subscriptions.

Hulu – “Anywhere, Anytime”

Hulu was founded in 2007 to offer streaming video on demand (VOD) over the internet, and is a joint venture between: